Friday, May 13, 2011

It is considered a sign of success in life even more significant than amassing large sums of money or property or of having some extensive collection when you have achieved the ability to do what you wish it, when you wish to do so. Taken that way, success can also mean reaching a point where you specifically don't have to do things that are abhorrent to you; you are more or less free to choose.

Thus success translates more to your ability to manipulate time, specifically time where you have the opportunity to do things related to maintaining health, curiosity, read, and consider narratives where scenarios of your creation seep forth. You frequently find yourself caught up in the observation of and participation in such scenarios, caught up in the dazzle of a smorgasbord of ideas, each tempting you with its urgency, reminding you in a kind of irony how time manipulates you as much as you manipulate it.

Time had a slower tempo when you were younger, more or less waiting for ideas to settle in so that you could chose which ones you wished to investigate. It seems to you that you had to put up with a good deal of boredom, waiting for things to gel, but that was then; you believe now that things have gelled because you were ready to take the necessary step of setting your own priorities, discovering what kind of life awaited you under the circumstances of you following priorities that may or may not have the best recommendations and experiences but which are nevertheless your priorities.

Sleep has become particularly fraught. You think to retire early, say eleven or possibly twelve, feeling the near smugness of a day well spent and well worked, but your dreams and between the acts of dreams seem sped up, dashes of images and sounds, clamoring for your attention, the attention you'd removed from your list of priority. Before you know it, morning light bleeds in through the drape and it feels as though you'd not so much slept the deep sleep of forgotten dreams so much as you'd been writing reports of segments of dramas going on about you, wanting the restraint of editorial order. Story is, of course, an imposed order upon the chaos of life and reality; in dreams, chaos wants its chance to break free and have its say. As a result you are sometimes running or swimming or driving great distances through desert and coastal landscapes, and for some reason not yet clear, seeing the countryside from the window of a train rushing from Heathrow to Paddington Station.

The day then becomes a rest from the intense chaos of sleep and the thrilling pull of your sleeping narrative voice. But of course the day has plans of its own, time has plans of its own, reality certainly has plans, most of which have no role for you.

And so you sit in various venues, before your computer or a note pad, trying to make sense of some detail that has presented itself to you with a whispered promise that it has just told you something it has never told another.

Preface

These are notes, arguments, and attempts to resolve any lingering indecision about works in progress, things I have observed, books and stories I have read, things I wish I had done, and things I wish I had not done. They are in effect the kinds of notes I put in bottles at the beach as a kid, but this time the hoped for reader is the me of the future, browsing here for the energy and vision that got these notes down in the first place.